After suffering early setbacks, the Northwestern women’s swimming team came down to the very last event in its meet with Big Ten rival Purdue, the 400 freestyle relay.
To start off the meet, the Wildcats had two of their four relays disqualified in the first event, the 400 medley relay, due to early takeoffs. This was followed by the disqualification of sophomore Kassia Shishkoff in the 1000 freestyle, an event she was expected to win.
Shishkoff made up for it in her next two events, winning both the 500 freestyle and 200 individual medley. Senior Katie Braun pulled her weight for the team as well. She backed up Shishkoff, coming in second in the 200 IM, and winning the 100 butterfly. Sophomore Emily Wong and senior Andrea Hupman were also victorious, with Wong winning the 50 and 100 freestyle and Hupman winning the 200 freestyle.
With the 1-2 finish in the second-to-last event, the 200 IM, the Cats needed to win the 400 freestyle relay to beat Purdue. Wong, Hupman, Shishkoff and Hayley Fry pulled it off, and the Cats claimed a 154-146 victory over the Boilermakers.
“I was a little nervous going into it, because the opponent’s first swimmer was really good, and she was keeping up with Emily (Wong), and Emily was doing really well that meet,” said Shishkoff, who swam the anchor leg. “So I was a little worried about that, but then Andrea and Hayley pulled it out. I went in and I was already ahead, so I knew that I could take them down.”
NU coach Jimmy Tierney said he was very proud of the way his swimmers performed at the meet, especially at this point in the season.
“(This win) took a lot of fighting back, because we had a few little setbacks along the way that we didn’t expect, but it is a great tribute to the girls and their successes,” he said. “We haven’t beaten (Purdue) in several years, and we have some girls now who are really going hard on the training. I almost wonder sometimes if I am beating them up too much during the week, but we’ve talked a lot about just being tough. We wanted to do all the work we needed to do this fall in order to swim fast at the championship meet, so they really took that to heart.”
The men had a double-dual meet, falling to both No. 22 Purdue (190-110) and Texas A&M (156-144).
The Cats also had difficulties early on, with their top 400 freestyle relay disqualifying. Nonetheless, junior Eric Nilsson had a strong meet, winning both the 500 freestyle and 400 IM and coming in second in the 200 freestyle. Alongside him with two individual victories was senior Kyle Bubolz, who won the 100 backstroke and the 100 butterfly.
“Eric (Nilsson) was expected to win the 500 free, but he came from behind in the 400 IM,” men’s coach Bob Groseth said. “As for Kyle (Bubolz), he had very strong underwaters (dolphin kicks), which definitely benefitted him in this race.”
Nonetheless, Groseth is already looking past this meet.
“Purdue has a lot more depth than we do, and their divers are very good, so we had to overcome that depth,” he said. “We knew the meet was going to be close, but we had both of our 400 medley relays disqualified. I think the meets we’re looking towards are when we go to Georgia (Nov. 30 through Dec. 2). Hopefully, down there we’ll see better performances, so we’re geared towards that right now.”
Reach Bette Marston at [email protected].
